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Digital Transformation for Public Sector: Galvanize to Revolutionize

I was delighted to be invited by our Asia Pacific team out of Australia to share my experiences leading digital transformation in the Obama Administration prior to joining Acquia.

I was exposed to some incredible energy during a packed schedule in Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne. I met a good few hundred people working at all levels of the public sector in Australia, including federal, state, and local government departments at a number of events, roundtables, and meetings.

The idea was to help those in the public sector hear how we navigated the considerable bureaucracy of a country with over 300 million citizens, to achieve digital transformation, when traditional change can be hard enough, let alone if it’s driven by digital technology.

Here is the thing that people often do not realize about people who work in the public sector: we work in the sector because we love it, and want to drive change for the better.

Speaking to the teams here driving the govCMS project (the standardization of the Australian Government on Drupal, working with Acquia and our partners), I had the overwhelming sense that they love what they do in public service, therefore been incredibly successful at it.

I would like to point out here - the govCMS project is gathering significant, and all in the absence of a mandate. It is important to note that it is not mandated that any Australian Government Department or Agency must use the govCMS platform. In fact, the team driving the project at the Department of Finance has declined two attempts at mandating it because they want people to want to use it, not to have to use it. And in two years, it has 124 sites live, 21 in development and 54 agencies using it (at time of writing this).

We ran some events and asked Sharyn Clarkson, Assistant Secretary at Department of Finance, and Dawn Routledge, Executive Director Policy & Innovation at Department of Finance, Services and Innovation, to share their experiences of digital transformation in relation specifically to the govCMS project.

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The most common questions during my time were ‘how can we innovate more, and better?’, and how can we innovate in the face of obstacles such as bureaucracy, rules and regulation?

I wanted to share my thoughts, and the considerable lessons Sharyn and Dawn shared with the group given they have incredibly current and relevant experience:

Innovation requires risk and failure: The only way to make government better is to innovate, and innovation comes from risk - you must be prepared to fail, learn and iterate. Quickly. Failure is a sign you’re trying to do things better. In government, risk is considered toxic and there’s a real aversion to risk. Actually, risk should be managed not avoided - there are obviously things that should not fail e.g. security, platform stability, you should be able to pay taxes, planes should not fall out of the sky. Know the places to be innovative.

Focus on a minimum viable team: My own personal favorite is to have as few people in the room / at the table as possible. The likelihood of the success of a project was inversely proportional to the number of people working on it. We heard about one leader’s drive for ‘minimum viable bureaucracy’ which resonated with the audience.

Focus on a minimum viable product: Emulate a minimum viable product (MVP) approach like the private sector would. Make sure everything is agile and iterative - and how to work out how to procure via sprint time, without named outcome, otherwise you have bid, build, rebuild and potentially waste millions of dollars.

Communicate and collaborate: It’s really important to share your vision, plans and failures - no one owns the problem, each department plays a role - so how you connect and collaborate is really important.

Address culture problems: Few of the problems are tech problems, they are usually people and culture problems.

Take action: Just get started - action what is in your control. Make the best thing to do the easiest thing to do. Run until you’re tackled.

Provide guidance: Governance is about guidance and support not control. There should be enough governance to make sure people don’t stray too far off the field.

Empower decision makers: Get your team to make the decisions, this imbues then with confidence and ownership

Experiment and try things: Test your assumptions, and then gently poke the beast.

It is really worth remembering that transformation is a journey that does not really have a destination. And, that every time someone adopts your platform, you get added functionality from what they contribute to the community. That is invaluable, and that is transformation.

Tom Cochran

Former VP and Chief Digital Strategist, Public Sector Acquia, Inc.

Tom Cochran joins Acquia to help governments across the federal, state, and local sectors leverage cloud and open source to accelerate their digital initiatives. He was most recently a deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of State, where he was responsible for the online and offline platforms for U.S. public diplomacy, focusing on data-driven decisions and international audience engagement.

Prior to that, Cochran was the director of digital technology at the White House, where he worked on the President's Open Government Directive, leading the team that was responsible for providing a secure, stable, and scalable infrastructure across all White House digital properties.

His team was responsible for leading the delivery of the “We the People” online petitioning site that connects people directly with the Executive branch. Cochran has also held leadership roles in the private sector, most recently as the chief technology officer at Atlantic Media, publisher of international news outlets including: The Atlantic, Quartz, Government Executive and National Journal.

“I had the good fortune of working in the Obama administration twice, once at the White House and once at the Department of State. Both times solidified my view that public service is a higher calling and an important line of work. As the administration was coming to an end, I wanted to find a role that allowed me to maintain alignment with the public sector and continue helping make government better,” he said. “Instead of owning a single series of problems at the White House or the State Department, I now have the ability to help tackle digital transformation efforts anywhere and everywhere. It really is an incredible opportunity to power government transformation efforts using open source technology.”

On a personal note, Cochran said Acquia’s commitment to work-life balance allowed him to be there when his loved ones needed him most.

“I had a serious family emergency come up just a few months into my new role. The company really emphasizes a family-first mentality and not having to stress about disappearing for a week to take care of things is incredibly valuable and a powerful message to employees,” he said.